feelings dump – SittingOverHereDreaming

Dear New York,

So this is it, huh? Six years and change– not a bad run. When I came, I knew that I I was going to be something. I wasn’t just another girl from the Midwest. And you know, you showed me that was true, but not in the way I expected. You didn’t prove I was destined for greatness. The city gave me space to lose the conceptions of who I had to be and it turns out, I was very different than the girl who lived in the Midwest. Gay. Butch. Kind, instead of angry. I left Michigan brilliant. As I leave you, I think people would say hardworking instead. Efficient. Witty, maybe. And I’m all the happier for it.

I’ve had my greatest triumphs and failures here. You’ll always be the rejection phone call from my dream job on the way to meet my grandparents at the airport, the man who spit at me when I was canvassing to try and make ends meet. You’re meeting the love of my life at a bar, and the first time I got a promotion, and getting contacted by an agent after reading a piece I wrote for school. You’re the slow disappointment of being unable to write more the agent liked. You’re the friends who will never be matched. The girls who turned me down. You’re losing my virginity with my socks on.

You’ll always be my first love. I remember the first time I saw it rain here. The streets became rivers and the city noise dulled down and you were more beautiful than even the movies made you look. That’s how I’ll think of you. Your skyline and all the millions of lights. To do that, I have to go. Right now all I can see is how tired I am, how hard I work to claim my place in this picture postcard of a city, how small I’ll have to live to stay in your heart. (It’s easy to think you won’t miss me. And maybe you won’t, but the guys from the deli will and the metro security guards will and the event regulars will and my coworkers will, and isn’t that the same thing?)

So here I say goodbye. Go well into the future, and take care of everyone I leave with you.

All the best,

Sam

It’s a week until the wedding. A week a week a week.

People keep asking if I’m nervous, if I’m excited. I don’t know what to say. I don’t have time to feel all I feel, life doesn’t stop, not even for this. I work up until the day before. I was supposed to have more time, but it never works like that, does it? This week has grown smaller and smaller still, I had Friday but not Saturday, then neither but Thursday, and now none at all after today, unless I call out tomorrow. I may have to call out tomorrow. There’s still so much to do, and nothing to do, and how is it that it’s just city hall and we planned ahead and there’s still so much?

My suit is still being altered, it needed another round. I don’t have shoes. I may need a different tie, the one I have sticks out the collar the slightest bit. I want to be handsome for them. I don’t want to destroy their dreams.

I have to write my vows, too, I have attempts but mostly I have blank pages, because how do I say all I need to and how do I not repeat things I say everyday? How do I say it all in front of my family, and theirs? Sometimes I still wish we had a single witness, no family, and sometimes I wish we’d done a bigger thing, and I’d invited more people who didn’t matter so I could have more who did. I’ve already upset my mother by not inviting her sister, if I were inviting more out of state people she’d probably kill me. Even just having two friends is pushing it. But I need them because I need someone there who knows how I feel already, who’s not simplifying me or my feelings. And there are things I won’t even be able to speak in front of them. Pain is secret, but it’s part of what I want to promise. We’ve had bad times, and will have more. We’re people who aren’t entirely healthy. We’re people who take care of each other, and sometimes struggle to take care of each other. We struggle to remember that part of that care is taking care of ourselves.

It’s supposed to rain now, on our wedding day. I’m supposed to be on my period. Neither of these predictions is ever reliable, but I’m sure they will be this time. I almost hope they are. I don’t want the day to be perfect, because it could never be prefect. We’re good at handling the not perfect, mostly. We like the humanness of it. It’s part of why we went with city hall, we don’t want to get swept up in the big ideas of the perfect day. I still struggle, a little. I fear I’ll disappoint them. I fear that morning, when I’m all a buzz and I have to wait, I fear how hard it will be to not leave hours early and how hard it will be to wait outside the hall, I fear the panic will rise in my chest, the panic that I am not good enough and have never been good enough, the panic I will not be able to voice because the only person I can almost believe sometimes will be with their mom so I don’t see them before we planned. We’re spending the night before apart, and now I wonder if it’s wise.

In a lot of ways, this whole thing has been easy. Loving them is the easiest thing
in the world. Easier than breathing. They make it easier to breathe. In a
lot of ways, this has been hard. Sometimes it makes all the hard parts
of existing even harder. Sometimes, it is easy and hard all at once. I’m
learning how to speak, how to say what I feel when it hurts and it
kills me and it keeps me alive. They see me even when I want to hide.
They love me.

I love them.

I’m going to marry them in seven days. I’m nervous, I’m excited, I’m scared. I’m sure.